But upon after carrying the bowl of piping hot soup to the table, I noticed that she missed out the milk. I’m fine with that.

When I carefully tried to dig out some fish (I don’t want to break the poached egg yolk inside) before snapping some pics, I found out that there’s NONE. Fried fish noodles with NO fish. Definitely short-changed, there. Grrr….!

So I brought the bowl back to her and informed her of the error. She took a pair of tongs and ROUGHLY dug around for the NON-EXISTENT fish pieces, thus breaking my dear egg and making a mess of my soup! My poor egg yolk!!!!

It’s bad enough that I missed out on eating my half-cooked poached egg because it got cooked thouroughly when sitting in the hot soup for too long. To have it broken?!

My colleagues told us that the plain milk flavour is the best so we chose just that and we had fresh fruits to go with it for a more refreshing palate.

We had the 'standard' aka large size, which is sufficient for sharing between 2 persons. My colleague had a whole bowl to himself, though. Then again, he's... well, different.

The ice was so fine, it melts nicely on the tongue. And the milk taste wasn't that overpowering. I had thought that the mango would have been the perfect pairing for this but it came out with a flat, sweet taste. Very one-dimensional. The strawberries were nicely tart and sweet at the same time and the flavours mingle really well with the milk ice.

On the fresh fruits also have bits of aloe vera jelly in them. Really, really refreshing on a hot weather!

Tuesday, November 23, 2010

We're often at loss as to what have for lunch. We always made a mad gamble to head blindly to a certain location and decide on the last minute, where we'll be dining at.

Initially, we meant to head to Parkway Parade. Then a colleague decided to just dine at the Marine Parade hawker centre. After which, another colleague recalled that Charco's had just moved into this area.

Entrance...

From the multi-storey carpark, that is. Back door into the foodcourt which brings you right to Charco's stall (hence that label on the door?).

Rack of Ribs + 3 Salads - $15.10

My order.

Choice of salads: (clockwise from bottom) potato salad, Greek salad & Caesar's salad. The potato salad is kinda' plain, actually. But nice, nevertheless. I love the sour-y vinaigrette used in the Greek salad. Aside from the cucumbers & capsicums, there's also some chunks of feta cheese. Yum!

As soon as I know that I'm heading here, I've set my mind on ordering their ribs. Aside from the one time at Breeks, I've never really had BBQ ribs anywhere else.

However, I wasn't sure if I want the regular ribs meals, which will come with only either chips, creme potato and peas. I had seen their salad display and I KNOW I WANT them.

Only when my colleague placed his order for this, do I realise there's such an option. However, the ribs had appeared pretty large in the picture and I fear that they'll be too much.

Turns out, they already conveniently cut the ribs up upon serving so we can easily nibble or slice, piece by piece.

Rack of Ribs + 3 Salads - $15.10

My colleague had a similar order, with different varieties of salads.

Since the ribs used is from lamb meat, the 'gamey' scent is pretty much inevitable (although I personally think that using rosemary does help a bit). My colleague, the foodie was griping so much about that. And the fact that the meat was not fall-off-the-bone kind of tender.

I asked him what the usual ribs are like (read: pork). He went on to glorify the tenderness, how meaty and definitely not 'gamey'.

I told him straight on that I don't have much of a choice, have I? It's either lamb of beef. And beef ribs tend to be tough and dry. Beside, I'm fine with this scent since we do get it when we wallop the beef/bone steak anyway.

Honestly, I like the ribs here. The BBQ marinade made the meat slightly crispy at the edges and leave a somewhat sweet aftertaste. The meat is tender enough such that we don't have a tough time chewing. Makes it all the more fun to just pick up each piece with our fingers and nibble on the meat and lick the sauce off the bones.

Gonna check out the seafood salad & creme potato the next time I'm here.

Hawaiian Meal - $8.50

Another colleague's order. Pineapple fritters, chips and 1/4 chicken.

The chicken here is the Charco's chicken, which is the one marinated with herbs. Another version would have been the Portugese chicken, which is supposedly spicy.

I didn't really try the chicken so I can't comment on its texture. Except that I got a large piece of the skin and it was crispy! However, the flavor seem a tad... mild. Maybe because this is the herb-y version. Not sure about the spicy, Portuguese one, though.

The chips here seem to be sticks cut from an actual potato, reminding me of those served with orders of 'Lamb chop' at atIndian 'mamak' stalls.

My colleague ordered this again. He totally digg it. Must be the 6 big, fat prawns. We even packed some for my boss and she was like, "All these prawns for just $3.50?!"

Beef Fried Bee Hoon - $4.00

My order. The beef version of the above.

I finally had an idea as to how this seemed to be prepared. The beef is stir-fried, them mixed together with bee hoon, bean sprouts, carrots, cucumbers, chilli with some sweet vinegar mix. Done just like a salad actually.

Talk about salad, I can never get enough of those greens served on the side. Regular mint, Vietnames mint (daun kesum) & Thai basil. The beef goes really well with them!

Love it! But the portion may seem a tad small if you're very hungry.

Thai-Style Fried Beef - $5.00

My colleague felt like having a side dish, so we made a special request (he left it to me to negotiate). They were surprised to know that he just want to eat the beef just like that.

Monday, November 08, 2010

Came down here with my close gal pals for dinner. Initial choice had been Swensens but I'm glad we came here. Ambiance was better, more cosy.

Too bad service was pretty lacking, what with the very much inexperienced staff. Totally adored the manager's initiative though, in making our table more 'baby-friendly', like placing the cutlery away from my baby's (very) quick hands.

So I got to have a taste of this when she asked me to verify if this had been more of a chocolate drink than coffee.

They eventually replaced this with her actual order. This one wasn't that bad, actually!

Classic Avocado - $6.90

This is oh-so-awesome! Came highly recommended by my friend.

Avocado with milk AND vanilla ice-cream. My friend was griping that there was less mocha syrup than the previous time that she was there.

But it already taste sooo good!

There's actually a 'Rainforest' version that comes with crushed chocolate chips. Yum-zeh!

Side salad

Comes with every mains.

This may be a simple bowl of greens but I tell you, the vinaigrette totally rocks! I wonder if it's the 'honey-lime' sauce that seem prevalent in most of their salad dishes.

Waffle fries w/ cheese & sour cream toppings - $4.90

I can't believe this cost only that. Makes me wanna go back there and just order this. Especially when these came piping hot. *drools*

Baked seafood pasta New Orleans - $15.90

The picture and description on the menu looks really enticing. Was really excited to see that there was a chockful of seafood items in that bowl.

Just too bad the sauce was a lil'... bland. As someone who is not used to sprinkling salt into her food, I just bear with the slight tastelessness. What a waste. The sauce was almost good.--------------------------

The menu here seemed to have shrunk somewhat. Maybe they re-vamped it. Missing some dishes that I've had before. Like the 'Honey something-something Ribs'. Hmm...

Thursday, November 04, 2010

Also within the Tang Tea House premise, this popular American foodstall was also sought after by my 2 cousins.

Told them there's an outlet at Bukit Batok, very near their Jurong neighbourhood (yes, they travel THAT far); yet they insist on coming here cos' they wanna have both western food AND dim sums under 1 roof. Anything for good food, aite...? ;P

Wednesday, November 03, 2010

2 of my cousins were totally enticed by my previous blog entry on this place and insist that I bring them here one day (you guys know who you are!).

You may notice that my orders are pretty much what I've had before. Can't help it, they were safe choices and they were good!

I don't bother to elaborate much on these (similar) dim sum dishes. You can hop over to my previous entry to read on them.

Teh Tarik

Anyway, as we know Hong Kong is pretty known for their milk tea. In the receipt this was stated as: 'Tea in HK Style'.

We asked for big cups. This one here is HUGE! Almost pint-sized.

Siew Mai

Har Gow

Xiaolong Bao

Crispy prawn dumpling

Inside the crispy prawn dumpling

Oh before I forgot, there's this chinese rojak stall inside here and their Yuotiao (Char Kway) Rojak is awesome!

Totally crispy and flavoursome, just that it ain't spicy. In fact, my mum said that it seem like it's done the traditional way. The youtiao was supposedly dipped in this chilli & syrup mix prior to being grilled. That's what gave another dimension to the flavour of this simple dish.